Middle Grade Holodomor

I simply loved Katherine Marsh’s new release, The Lost Year. This middle grade novel connects a thirteen-year-old boy, Matthew, with his great-grandmother, who survived the Holodomor—Ukraine’s man-made famine of 1932/3. The strength in this book comes from the connection between young people and old people. 

My own family connection to kulaks and Ukraine instantly attracts me to any book … fiction, non-fiction, adult or middle-grade … written on the subject. In her author’s note, in spite of numerous sources for her research, Katherine Marsh says that own family that served as her “emotional touchstone” (p. 346). 

Putin now repeats Stalin’s approach by pitting families against each other. The history of almost a hundred years ago haunts us once again—families are being broken by the manipulative propaganda of a cruel regime. Kulaks, like my mother and her family, were the scapegoat back in the early 1930s. Jews were the scapegoat for the Nazis. Ukrainians are the scapegoat for modern Russia.

Marsh shows how the 1930s world was quick to believe Walter Duranty’s claim in the New York Times that the famine was exaggerated. The power of media continues to play a vital role in our world and it’s never been more at risk. Back in late March, 2023, the American journalist, Evan Gershkovich, accused of spying, was arrested in Russia. Back in 1933, Gareth Jones, a young Welsh journalist, reported on starvation in the Soviet Union and died under mysterious circumstances two years later. Journalism, truth-telling, is a dangerous job. 

The Lost Year is also a novel about immigration and about connecting faraway places, times and family. Katherine Marsh weaves place, time and family together with spectacular skill. And she deftly ties the pandemic in there, too. 

I’m grateful that books like this are not only being written, but also being noticed. The Lost Year is a must-read for anyone concerned about current events … or past.

The Great Purge

I missed out on having grandparents and as I got older that lack became a need to know WHY. Discovering my maternal grandfather’s signature on his interrogation papers back in the secret police files in Zhytomyr (now in Ukraine, in 1937 part of the

My mom, top right.

USSR) back in 2004 changed my world. It meant he was real . . . that he existed. 

September 19th continues to have a special meaning to me. The NKVD Troika found the former kulak guilty of counter-revolutionary activities under Article 58 (SFSR Penal Code) and in 1937, at 3:13 in the morning, Eduard Ristau was shot in the back of the head.  That was 84 Septembers ago during the Great Purge (aka The Great Terror). Why was he found guilty? He had letters from his children who were now in Germany . . . letters with money in them. He was obviously selling state secrets to the fascist enemy. 

Once, Eduard Ristau (called Franz Halter in my novels) was a husband, a father of several children, a farmer and a windmill owner. His wife died back in 1931, faraway in Siberian exile, his youngest son died enroute, but his older children made it to safety with relatives in another country.

My grandfather managed to survive the famine years of the Holodomor, hiding and always running, but in the end the NKVD got him. . . a penniless, persecuted man. Still, he tried his best and I wouldn’t be here, if he hadn’t found a way to send his children, and my future mother, to safety. Rest in peace, grandpa. And, thank you.

And thanks again to Don Miller, author of Under Arrest, who helped me find the files in the Zhytomyr archives. 

Remembering the Holodomor during COVID19

In Canada, the fourth Friday and Saturday of November are Holodomor Remembrance Days. I remember my grandfather, Eduard Ristau, who survived the Holodomor in rural Ukraine. He would have spent 1932 and 1933 in hiding—trying to avoid arrest—after his farm had been confiscated for collectivization. Mathilde, his wife and my grandmother, died in distant Siberia a year earlier. My mom, Else, and his other kids had been safely sent to East Prussia just in time. But my grandpa couldn’t get his documents in order. And so he lived through Stalin’s starvation agenda enforced by the OGPU (Soviet secret police).

During those long months of starvation, my grandfather received letters and money from his East Prussian extended family. In 2004, I read those letters in the Zhytomyr secret police files. It was so precious to me to make this connection with him and I am forever grateful that he let his kids get out of the country in time. My mom and her siblings, already half-starved after their time in Siberia, would probably never have survived the Holodomor. 

While visiting various villages in the former Volhynia area, one old woman told me of how she would cower in the fields with the mice as the OGPU came around confiscating grain and the seeds for the next year’s crops. 

 Wikipedia

Our local Human Rights Museum educates visitors about the Holodomor and reminds us of the suffering caused by deliberate starvation by the Soviet government. 

Today, during  COVID, I am grateful to be living in Canada—a country that is trying hard to help each of us stay alive, fed, safe and warm. It’s mind-boggling to me that anti-maskers would see masks as anti-freedom.

And yes, you can miss what you’ve never had. I’ve always missed my grandparents and it took me half a century to learn their story. Opa Ristau—homeless and starving in the empty barns of rural Ukraine—I remember you today on Holodomor Remembrance Day.

FYI:   28,000 people died daily at the height of the famine. Today—with a pandemic raging—I’m finally beginning to grasp what that number means. Another sad fact: 30% of those deaths were under the age of ten. 

 

about time

I still have another week off work and it's wonderful. The gift of time is a such a treat. I got this New Times link from a listserve I'm on. A new memorial has been erected in Kyiv to remember the 1932/3 famine in Ukraine. 

It's about time.

Holodomor Awareness Week in Winnipeg cont

It's been a rough week - and I'm not talking about our early winter and the ice-covered streets and sidewalks - that's just November in Winnipeg. I'm referring to the Holodomor commemoration that went on all week. I went to our legislative building - a huge, imposing structure made of limestone and fit for a king - last Sunday and heard Ukrainian choirs sing. There was even a German Mennonite choir - for it wasn't just Ukrainians and Russians who got caught in Stalin's ambitious economic vision.

There was also a display area with posters of art and facts about the famine. All we can do now is remember. It seems to be too little, too late - and yet, it's by remembering

 that we acknowledge that it happened and for survivors like these women, (fewer men are left to share these stories because they were war casualties), it must mean so much, to not forget the horrors of death by hunger.

Stalin admits to ten million deaths because of his collective farm initiative. My mom narrowly avoided death during collectivization, and then because of my grandfather's selflessness, she avoided the famine by being adopted out and leaving USSR in January, 1932 - one season before the holodomor set in. 

(My photo taking skills can only get better - I hope. Clicking on photos should enlarge them.)      

My grandfather stayed behind and survived the famine. Of course, in the end, Stalin got him during the mass shootings of the 1937 Great Terror. 

I also got to watch a Ukrainian-made movie, Famine-33 by Oles Yanchuk, based on a book called The Yellow Prince. It was a very sad film. Slow, painful, and bleak.

Holodomor commemoration

There's an article in yesterday's local paper about a week of commemoration for the Holodomor victims. I pointed it out to my family. "What's the holodomor?" they asked.  And I realized that so much still needs to be said about Stalin's atrocities. Everybody knows about Hitler and the holocaust.

Here's a few facts about the holodomor:

1. The word holodomor comes from two words meaning hunger and death or plague.

2. The time is 1932/33

3. The place is most of the grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union - Ukraine is especially hard hit.

4. The victims were six to seven million people who may have died during this man-made famine.

5. The aftermath: the famine was not talked about until 1991 when Ukraine finally achieved independence. Why? Because people were too afraid. Too afraid that somehow they'd get into trouble for doubting the goodness of the Soviet state.

Starvation appears to be such an easy concept to understand. But what is it really like to starve to death? What is it like to be a mother who can't feed her own children?

See this link for a ceremony earlier this year, commemorating the 75th anniversary of the  Holodomor  out in Toronto. My city of Winnipeg has a very large Ukrainian population, so I  expect tomorrow's ceremony to be well attended.

p.s. My own family - although my grandfather, grandmother, mother and her siblings were all born in what is present-day Ukraine - considered themselves Germans. Stalin did not differentiate between Ukrainians and Germans. To him they were kulaks - an economic, and not ethnic, distinction. I realize that this can be a contentious issue.  Let's use 'humanity' as the common link to all suffering.